Robot 6

Comics A.M. | The comics Internet in two minutes

Legal | A judge in Macomb County, Michigan, has reduced the bond for Michael George from $2.5 million to $500,000 following an appeals court ruling that that the retailer should get a new trial in the 1990 fatal shooting of his first wife. He has been in jail since his arrest in August 2007 after detectives reopened the 17-year-old cold case.

George was convicted of first-degree murder in March 2008 and sentenced in June 2008 to life in prison. However, the judge set aside the conviction less than three months later, citing prosecutorial misconduct and the release of new evidence that could lead the jury to believe another person was responsible for the murder. [Detroit Free Press]

Legal | Drew Combs digs for additional information about the unnamed lawyer who allegedly stole the documents that represent the basis for the Warner Bros. lawsuit against Mark Toberoff, the attorney representing the heirs of Jerry Siegel and the estate of Joe Shuster. [The AM Law Daily]

Publishing | Sung So-young reports that while the once-thriving Korean comics industry is in “the midst of a crisis because of rampant illegal downloads and a shrinking market,” the movies and television series adapted from manhwa are doing well. [JoongAng Daily]

iPad

Digital comics | Jason Snell surveys comics-reader apps for the iPad, and discovers a mix of good and bad news: “Fans of DC Comics will be sad to know that the company currently has no digital presence whatsoever. […] I also can’t find any trace of popular Indie publisher Dark Horse comics. (There are a bunch of books the publisher released as iPhone apps, but they’ll only run on the iPad in pixel-doubled compatibility mode.) What’s worse, some publishers who have released digital comics seem reluctant to part with their best stuff, or their most recent releases. […] It’s a situation that smacks of the music industry in the heart of the Napster era. The fact is, scanner-equipped pirates have ensured that every comic book published is available online in a matter of days after release. At some point, the comics industry needs to understand that artificial barriers and the withholding of content just won’t work, and that they need to provide a good-karma, legal alternative to the comic scans that abound on BitTorrent tracker sites.” [Computerworld]

Creators | Brian Bolland took on postmodern artist Erró for “reinterpreting” one of his Tank Girl covers, and won. [Bleeding Cool]

G.I. Joe: Hearts & Minds #1

Creators | Brian Truitt talks with World War Z author Max Brooks about writing IDW Publishing’s G.I. Joe miniseries Hearts & Minds: “I wanted to bring a humanity to the bad guys, and I also wanted to bring a dark side to the good guys. I wanted to make them all complicated, and I wanted to deal with issues that got people talking. The truth is, we’re at war right now — we’re in two wars — and you just can’t do that squeaky-clean 1980s violence. The Joe comics that are going now are pretty dark, and so are the ones in the ’80s, so I’m not making them darker. I’m just going a little deeper and maybe putting in a little more humanity and a little more backstory.” [USA Today]